• Forum software update definitely does not break anything, and staff are certainly not looking for new forum themes.
  
• Errors on the part of the Linear One found not to be errors on the part of the Linear One by decree of the Linear One. Public faith in the Absolute Perfection of the Linear One is restored.
  
• Community Etiquette updated to cover recent forum changes.
  
• New forum toys! New script “/dice” allows for random number generation and dice rolls within posts. Wow!
  
• Modern Tech Roleplay gets an events scripts, to chronologically order and log significant RP world events. Many should make more use of it. Yes.
  
• Ikarius adds new changes to Discord: new channels, and a scrolling Pip feed tied to twitter. Handy!
  

Quote:Prince Lyrn was only twenty-three when he first stepped foot in Zanaro. He was still quite baby-faced, albeit tall by the day's standards and certainly built to wear his unblemished bronze cuirass and swing a sword properly. A descendant of the Feryn the Glorious, Lyrn still had Florinthian features, as opposed to the largely ethnic Geinic and Syorid he commanded. His thick black hair, kept short and swept back from face, shined a dark mahogany under the sun, while his green eyes had the softness only one who grew up in the comfort of royal society could have. That would change soon.

On his mother's, Archking Hilfrid, order, he lead the 17th, 18th, and 19th Hosts and their auxiliaries across the Bastion river and into the Zanarite Kingdom of Phortain. His mother had told him much of the Phortainese: they were a vile pagan people, who persecuted and massacred Rune-fearing Messanites. They'd killed his grandfather, Lyrn I, and were obstructing Lanlania's Just Labor: the liberation of Azreae, as decided by Rune and decreed by his great-great-grandfather, Feryn the Glorious. He'd heard of how, after defeating his grandfather, they'd degraded his body and threw it in a ditch with the other Lanlanians they'd massacred. They were truly a barbarian people, and it was his duty, by Rune's Will, to punish them.

"Prince."

Lyrn finishing tying his boots and glanced towards the entrance to his tent. "Ordinskarl?"

"Aye, Prince."

Lyrn's second-in-command was a Syorid man, perhaps three-tens in age, with black, curly hair reaching his neck matted under his bronze officer's helmet. He carried a short sword at his waist, much like Lyrn did as he pushed aside the leather flap and stepped outside. "Scouts report the Phortainese army has exited Orenhold and is marching to meet us. They are reported four leagues away."

"How soon can we march?" Lyrn asked. He walked past his deputy, Doren, and accepted the bowl of breakfast handed to him by an aid near the campfire. The area ahead of him was a sprawling grid of tents, surrounded by hastily erected log walls. It had an unpleasant male smell, though it was somewhat drowned out by the stew the cooks had made. At least until the two smells mixed and it again became disagreeable.


>> Read More Here <<

Quote:Vasily Utryev, CT7, despised each and every foreigner in the internment camp. He watched them shuffle into the camp cafeteria with unbridled derision. Each and every week, foreign tourists were caught with drugs or weapons or religious paraphernalia. Each of them came with an agenda and didn't particularly care what the Vestians had to say about it. Everyone wanted to overthrow the Mandate or profit from its destruction, and each of them had the same insufferable audacity to claim they did it all for the poor, miserable, backwards Vestians too foolish to realize the wonders of capitalism or majesty of socialism.

Horseshit. Vasily liked the Mandate just fine, and so did most of his comrades. He was good at his job but didn't like extra hours, so he sat comfortably at CT7. The Mandate neither screwed him out of fair compensation nor ceaselessly pushed him to uptier to the level of his incompetence. Better than dying in an office chair working 80-hour weeks for the reward of doing more work.

That reminded him that it was indeed time to put some warm bodies to work. He needed no VOX system - his voice carried to the four corners of the earth on a clear, warm day like today. He drummed on the cheap folding cafeteria table that served as his recruiting office and cleared his throat.

"Foreign prisoners," he said, forcefully addressing the weary lunch crowd, "you have been told repeatedly that your only parole is MT13 service. You can pick Fuel Duty or Genetic Test Subject if you want, but you'll die. Join the penal brigades, Redeem yourselves in fire, and you may yet live and be repatriated to your old countries. There is a new unit forming up today for immediate deployment, Ashkubans only. See me if you want to get out of the Mandate."

Tytus, now in his third month at the camp, knew better than to ask too many questions. He sprinted to the table where Vasily sat with reams of paperwork.

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• Arkianian invasion of Achia appears to draw to a close with victory in sight.
  
• Kazemura becomes first Ostaran nation to win - and subsequently host - the Voice of Siora music competition. Congratulations!
  
• “Drubang” is a funny word.
  
• In the future, there is no strife, only Pure and Total Meritocracy.
  
• Your robber-baron hedonism has no chance to survive. Make your time.
  
• New Zealmark falls to chaos as its Soyabar-backed government is ousted in a military-religious coup. Soyabar invades to restore order, clashes with alleged Ishnalli fighters supporting coup/rebels.
  
• After months of threats, Belayazemlya launches brutal ethnic warfare against Eretzora into Yarv valley, displacing many thousands. Severyane responds with intervention in its border states.
  
• International row ensues after Severyane impounds Carpathian shipping in its ports under accusation of smuggling arms to its enemies.
  

Quote:I promised Flobro to do an article-thingy on Russian history, and perhaps an interesting one would be about the so-called Duma Monarchy or the Duma era, the period between 1905 and the 1917 Russian February Revolution during which the Russian Tsar accepted some form of constitutional limits to his ''autocratic'' powers and enabled the creation of an elected legislative body, the Duma.

It is an interesting period to look at because 2017 is the centenary year of the Russian February Revolution and the October Revolution (the one where Bolsheviks came to power and established a Communist dictatorship). But instead of focussing on the events of 1917, which are very chaotic, confusing, and messy, the Duma period that preceded it is what I find personally more interesting. Because here the Russian Tsars were experimenting with democratic reforms and parliamentary politics, in a desperate attempt restore public confidence in the monarchy. One question that always accompanies this final episode of the Russian Empire is whether the creation of a Russian constitution and parliament would’ve been the beginning of a modern, constitutional Russia - capable of averting violent revolution and bloody civil wars. The argument of many historians often goes that, had the World War not ruined the fun, the Duma Monarchy would've never collapsed. Other historians instead point to the fatal flaws in the design of the Duma system, its subsequent failure to alleviate political and social tensions within Russian society, and therefore in fact seeing it as the cause for further deepening the political rifts that would later enable Russians to murder fellow Russians. Lets be clear that historians agree that the Duma Monarchy functioned poorly. It was a political mess. The disagreements arise about whose fault that was, and whether the system had any future at all. Of course it also touches upon the never-ending historical debate about the ~main cause~ of the Russian Revolution and the fall of the Romanovs.

>> Read More Here <<

• A big welcome back to all the returning names! Battlion, Carpathia, STRATCOM and other, it’s good to see some old faces return after being away for various reasons.
  
• Welcome to Eternity, Miljoen_vuist!
  
• Everyone gets Armello. Fun times are had.
  
• Sims versions of members are created, and an Eternity House built. Flo’s face is silly.
  
• Custom Crusader Kings map project on hold, as developer of tools abandons project.
  
• Eternity Minecraft nears date to begin public testing.